Games Inbox: Tomb Raider, Freedom Fighters 2, and Android gaming

Today’s morning Inbox is still not happy with Battlefield 3, as one reader reveals the world’s tastiest console. To join in with the discussions yourself simply email us at
gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk.

Tomb Raider – she’ll catch her death in that

Put a coat onI hope Tomb Raider’s delay affords the developers some time to consider a redesign of Ms. Croft. The promotional stills featuring a nubile teen in a bulging vest, covered in mud and scrapes seem a little sleazy. I know, having Lara without a heaving cleavage would be like having Indiana Jones without his hat, but in this post-Uncharted age, she desperately needs a rounded personality, not figure.I’m really trying not to sound like a right-on prude, and I think gaming should be free to tackle any subject it wants, especially sexuality. If Lara’s vulnerability is a key gameplay mechanic, and her exposed skin a design to make us feel more protective of her, then it could be a masterstroke. But so far I can’t help being reminded of the movie Sucker Punch: in one breath talking up the strong, feminist heroines; in the next, nudging all the teenage boys and grunting, ‘Phwoar, look at the feminism on that.’Toby BalcombeFreedom from sequelsOn a whim I popped Freedom Fighters into my original Xbox and what fun I had. This game is nine years old and still stands up today as a solid squad shooter with an interesting concept/story. I began thinking of a Hot Topic suggestion, most wanted sequels or franchise continuations. Which games left the GC readership hungry for more only for their appetite to go ignored?If publishers read GC perhaps we’ll actually get what we want instead of countless Call Of Duty and Assassin’s Creed updates. It appears to me some very odd titles receive an extra lease of life, i.e. The Darkness, Prototype and Lost Planet?! Were the aforementioned titles best sellers, I think not, so why do they get sequels when the likes of Freedom Fighters, Psi-Ops and the TimeSplitters series lie in gaming limbo?MSVGC:It’s a topic we’ve done a few times before, but it can probably bear another go around soon.Portable robot I know GC don’t have an Android-enabled device so I was looking for suggestions from fellow readers for games for my new HTC Desire S (I held out from getting a smartphone as long as I could but I wanted to settle arguments down the pub quicker) that play to a touchscreen’s strengths, i.e. role-playing games, strategies, etc.Meestah Bull (gamertag)

Breaking the sealI have a huge backlog of games, and am now concerned about my Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games which have included downloadable content with a code that expires.I was alarmed by the recent Inbox comments about the Mass Effect 2 Cerberus code expiring. I tried it today and luckily it still worked. Most of my backlog games are still sealed and I have no idea which ones have these types of download codes that will expire.Perhaps a fellow GCer knows of a list of affected games? I can then open those and use the codes – if they still work.KhalsaBlade (gamertag)/Akali (PSN ID)/Blade (Steam ID)GC:If it’s not an obvious question why have you got so many unopened games? Couldn’t you have just bought them when you were ready – and they were likely cheaper?Vital requirementI am not surprised by the PS Vita not selling well. Its continued lack of new games and the current line-up of games is woeful. Unit 13 is OK but I am bored with it already. I have played most of the other games and have not liked any of them. It’s E3 or bust I think. Just like 3DS a good number of quality games being announced at E3 could turn the Vita’s fortunes around.Killzone, a new Ratchet & Clank, LittleBigPlanet and God Of War would be great for first party titles. Assassin’s Creed, Tomb Raider (I would love a Vita version of the new game!) and of course Black Ops II on Vita would really boost sales. The only great games are downloadable titles at the moment. I own MotorStorm RC, Super Stardust Delta, Escape Plan and Top Darts. All excellent but only for short bursts. I know it’s a handheld but I play my Vita in the house too. I need something with a long story.Soul Sacrifice looks amazing though. Could it really be Dark Souls Vita? Also I am looking forward to The Amazing Spider-Man game. Really hope Beenox get it right with this one. I long for a great Spider-Man game.Big Angry Dad82 (gamertag)/FF13ACE (PSN ID)PS: I am not getting excited for Resistance: Burning Skies due to being disappointed with all three PlayStation 3 titles. I will of course read your review GC and make my decision based on that. I don’t have high hopes though, all the trailers look buggy and broken like the PlayStation 3 games.PPS: The Vita is an amazing console, the tech is fantastic. We just need games! I really don’ t want Vita to go the same way as the PSP.Turning tricksRegarding DICE and EA shutting down the servers, I could fill a week’s worth of the Inbox with quotes from the executive producer of Battlefield 3 Patrick Bach, but here are a few choice cuts.

From October last year justifying the online pass:’The whole idea is that we’re paying for servers and if you create a new account there is a big process on how that is being handled in the backend. We would rather have you buy a new game than a used game because buying a used game is only a cost to us; we don’t get a single dime from a used game, but we still need to create server space and everything for you. We want people to at least pay us something to create this because we’re paying for it. It was actually a loss for us to have new players. Hopefully people understand why. It’s not to punish people. To us it’s compensation.’Now that they are not going to provide servers, but the general public are, I assume the revenue generated from online passes will be distributed accordingly. It’s not to punish you Patrick, to us it’s compensation. April this year , on how they are trying to constantly improve and evolve the Battlefield 3 experience:’It’s such a complicated game. I don’t know how many guns we have in the game. It’s plenty. Then, together with all the vehicles, maps, and gadgets, they all need to work perfect on all maps, and it needs to work the same on all maps. It can’t be, here’s a special case for this map, and here’s a special case for this map. That’s the challenge for us, to find the ultimate balance of everything.’So they have spent the last six months trying to refine the ‘ultimate balance of everything’ but now if you are very good, very bad or simply have done something to upset the host (put the wrong preserve on your crumpet for example) you can be removed from the game, probably having spent the best part of an hour there because you could only find a 5000% ticket match.Until November 2011, Call Of Duty had been the main (and almost only) game I played online with. The past six months though, I’ve loved Battlefield. It’s a fantastic and wonderfully different experience, but I’m not prepared to spend twenty minutes wading through pages of servers trying to find the type of game I want, only to find that when I get there it turns out you can’t use weapon X, explosives, frags, etc. Cheers for putting all that time and effort into creating a balanced game DICE.And from the same interview in April, my final and favourite quote: ‘It’s not about, how do we make money, how do we trick people into buying this?’ Well Patrick, I consider myself tricked.Boomey

You shall not passMyself and two friends got together last night for a Battlefield 3 evening, all in one room – three PlayStation 3s and 3 TVs (beats online). Quickly we realised that there were no official servers to play on, only rent-a-servers with bizarre rules or a stupid number of tickets. We also got kicked from one server for having the audacity to simply join.Quite simply EA have ruined the game. We all paid for the game, which has an online pass supposedly to help pay for servers, and yet EA have seen fit to remove official servers. Well I’m not impressed and I hope there is a backlash towards EA as simply accepting this will result in worse to come.PokeymikePlayed Battlefield for almost 90 minutes for one game just to get three kills from the end of the game to get booted by the host. Great, just what you want. But this happens at least once or twice a night. I think the way it is now they have is going to lose lots of peopleJPS: RIP Adam Yauch aka MCA of the Beastie Boys…GC:We should point out that EA and DICE have insisted that they are bringing back official servers and they should already be much more prevalent than last week. But we do ask readers to keep us updated with their experiences.They weren’t regularsHaving a lot of fun with Trials Evolution at the moment and much prefer it to the original. I enjoyed the original Trials HD but was eventually deterred due to the incredibly drab, omnipresent warehouse setting and the ever increasing difficulty. Evolution’s tracks on the other hand are brilliantly diverse. I’m around 60% of my way through the tracks and have yet to become truly stuck. Track Central is a masterpiece, it basically gives you mountains of downloadable content for absolutely nothing, if only more developers would embrace sharing on consoles in this manner. The only downside is the bloody awful music that permeates the entire game. Finally decided to take a gander at the comments section of your Starhawk review and I wasn’t surprised to see that a lot of people were riled because a very average game was given a more than adequate review and score. I’ve always hated fanboys, and in particular console fanboys, why someone would pledge their unwavering support to a piece of plastic is beyond me. The only reason fanboys of the kind that go around leaving derogatory remarks about reviewers and other consoles exist is because they are unable to procure more than one console a generation. I play all multiformat games on my Xbox because I believe the Xbox controller is vastly superior to that of the PlayStation 3’s, I also believe the Xbox has a better online service. I prefer the PlayStation 3’s exclusives and the game I am most looking forward to this year is The Last of Us. I don’t think either console is definitively superior to the other as they both have their positives and negatives. iLike Fat Ladys (gamertag)/Selfish_Lover17 (PSN ID)PS: I’ve been quite naive in believing all of GC’s patrons were affable and open-minded people, but after reading through the comments on your Starhawk review and being attacked by a viewer named Foetus because of a harmless joke, I’ve finally discovered that idiots are ubiquitous.Don’t skip SunshineIn response to Deceitfularcher’s letter and good platform games on the GameCube. I would like to throw Billy Hatcher And The Giant Egg into the mix as it’s quite a quirky little game with some nice touches and I also think it was a GameCube exclusive.As for Super Mario Sunshine and keeping the good spirit of GameCentral up. I just happen to have a spare copy (sadly no instructions though) lying around. I don’t have a PlayStation 3 so I can’t message him directly but if he’s happy to pass his details on to GC and then on to me, then I’m more than happy to let him have it. To cut a long story short I saved it from being thrown into a skip. After reading his letter I’m convinced it will go to a good home so it’s his if he wants it?freeway 77Dark MarioA while ago someone asked in the Inbox if it was possible to play Dark Souls offline, obviously it’s possible but enjoyable, I don’t think so. I love this game but on four major boss battles I have had help from strangers including the Bell Gargoyle where I stayed out the way whilst the two I had summoned did all the work. After a while I felt a bit guilty so I rushed towards this boss near the end of the fight to try and contribute but got killed straight away. Luckily the boss was killed as I died so when I returned to the roof I was able to pass the area and ring the bell. I think the game would have been too frustrating without this help.Anyway, talking of frustrating, my daughters aged eight and six had a Wii for Christmas with Super Mario Galaxy 2 and keep asking me to do different levels for them. I know this game is class and each level amazes me but I find this game so annoying. Maybe it’s using the different style controller and nunchuk but it really is a test of patience more so than Dark Souls.Dark Souls, Mario and coming up to 40 (end of year) has got me looking back at my gaming life. I was thinking of some challenging games I have played before and remembered Exhumed on the Saturn. If I remember it right there was no saving until the end of a section which meant dying sent you all the way back to the start of that section and there were some horrible jumps to be made. Whilst on the subject of the Saturn does anyone remember a game called Dark Saviour? I think it was a role-playing game. A mate bought it but it annoyed him so much that he gave it to me. I enjoyed it but can’t remember much about it now.Lastly, I had a look at those fanboy rants about that review of Starhawk last week. I went to the Metacritic site to see other reviews (a mixed bag) and noticed that the lowest scores all have the same fanboys in the comment section. One in particular grabbed my attention jason_ac who wrote loads of comments basically saying the reviewer was bad at games and telling people to ignore this review as the reviewer hadn’t played the game.Others claim that Microsoft have paid these journalists to give bad reviews and tell of a bonus free download from Sony of Warhawk if you purchase this game. Are these fanboys actually working for Sony? It seems like a lot of effort to just stick up for a game you like.aem72PS: I will try to write more often so next time my letter will be shorter.Best birthday (cake) everThought you guys and fellow readers might like to see the awesome birthday cake my wife got me this weekend, and yes that is Super Mario World (the greatest video game ever made!) in the cartridge slot! Keep up the good work.Country Mike

Looks good enough to play

Inbox also-ransRE: GavsEvans123. On the PlayStation 3 version of the recent Phineas And Ferb movie tie-in game (not actually that bad and pretty fun) it includes four episodes from the series on it, only about an hour’s worth of content but still enough justification to load up the game once in a while.Tomontherun99 (PSN/Steam ID)

Back to 1997 this morning. Wave Race 64. What gameplay, still the best water effects ever. Still remember doing an all-nighter back in the day, then destroying my mate the next morning, pretending I’d just opened the box. This game has not aged. I’ve got Blue Storm on the ‘Cube but for me the handling was never there. Congratulations you get to move up to the next class!MckndrLouiHey, can anyone tell me if there is a converter so that I can use NES controllers on a Famicom? Just the NES ones have longer cables and it makes things a little easier if can use them! Also got myself one of these now I can get my dose of SNES goodness on the move (it’s region free).NeilI just want to thank the GameCentral team (sniff), for what you guys do to your bodies… (sniffle)… it’s still real to me god dammit!CrackCity_Rocker (PSN ID)GC:Pardon?

This week’s Hot TopicThe subject for this week’s Hot Topic was suggested by readers Alistair Cartwright and FriendlyGroke (gamertag)/TheFlyingGerbil (PSN ID). They both ask the same basic question: what’s the most inventive way you have of playing a game differently?Partially inspired by this reader’s feature , we want to know what’s the most interesting or unexpected thing you’ve discovered in a game? Was it a move you never realised was possible or an unusual use for a weapon or vehicle? Or perhaps a part of the game world that you didn’t expect to be interactive? Maybe it was a response from a computer-controlled character you didn’t expect?Did any of these discoveries lead to new ways of playing the game and where any of them useful for multiplayer? Do you think the developer intended the feature you discovered? And how important do you think these smaller details and Easter eggs are to a game?

E-mail your comments to:gamecentral@ukmetro.co.ukThe small printNew Inbox updates appear twice daily, every weekday morning and afternoon. Letters are used on merit and may be edited for length.You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word 4Player viewer features at any time, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.